Thursday, April 26, 2007

The Devil Came Down To Toys-R-Us

(Edits and addenda below!)

Yesterday, Her Bad Father and I had a disagreement. About child-rearing. Which, of course, he has a say in, even though much of the time I try to pretend that I have sole authority on all matters WonderBaby.

Most of the time, we agree entirely on the terms and conditions of WonderBaby wrangling, and on matters pertaining to the day-to-day care, feeding and amusement of WonderBaby he leaves things entirely to me. This is not because he does not participate in the day-to-day care/feeding/wrangling - he absolutely does, to a greater degree than most fathers with his kind of schedule (unless a project interferes, he always does the morning and evening routines with her. And then he cooks me dinner. Which is to say, none of what I'm about to say should in any way be interpreted as complaint.)

But one matter that never fails to provoke an unsolicited opinion from him is this: any and all displays of real or perceived consumerism. Baby consumerism. Specifically, consumption of garish plastic thingamabobbies marketed to mothers of babies who are desperate for distractions and who are a little quick on the credit-card finger. More specifically, my consumption of garish plastic thingamabobbies that are marketed to me and my (allegedly) itchy credit card finger.

Once upon a time - before WonderBaby joined our happy household - Her Bad Father and I agreed that we would never - never - allow giant, brightly-coloured plastic kid contraptions to cross our threshold. Never. Instead, our child would amuse herself with environmentally-friendly, hand-crafted toys - fashioned out of wood or refurbished tin or free-range sheep's wool by happy, well-paid Swedish craftspeople or local artists or perhaps delivered to our modernist living room in the night by the Bauhaus Toy Fairy. That, or she would play with cardboard boxes and read books and frolic in the garden and knit her own hats out of hemp yarn that we would spin as a family on Sunday mornings. Also, she would never, ever watch TV, and would be breastfed until she was old enough to pour her own organic soy milk.

Which, ha. WonderBaby had been in our lives all of eight days when we gave in to my mother's insistence that she buy our nap-averse infant a giant, hideous motorized rocking bassinet thingy that took up two-thirds of the space in our hitherto minimalist living room. We only tolerated the thing for a matter of weeks before we had it spirited away lest the glowy rotating mock-aquarium at its centre suck our souls away, but it was too late. The Rubicon had been crossed. From there it was a downward spiral into a deep - but brightly coloured - pit of plastic and tinny music and flashing lights from which we only emerge to turn on the television and give her bottles and put disposable diapers on her bum and otherwise contribute to environmental degradation and global capitalism. Our - my - need for respite from the constant demands of a turbo-charged midget overcame our determination to stay the course of the modern, conscientious, overfunctioning parent. It was all over before it even began.

Still, we manage to contain things. We don't have any giant plastic kitchen sets or kid-sized toy cars or anything, really, that is bigger than WonderBaby. We recycle, we share toys with other parent friends, we do our part to not succumb entirely to siren call of Toys-R-Us. And so we're generally okay with the level of plasticky clutteredness in our household and with our well-monitored vulnerability to the marketing of such things as contribute to such plasticky clutteredness and the like. Or, at least, I thought that we were.

Yesterday, WonderBaby and I acquired this:

Creepy plastic baby not included.

And Her Bad Father had - how shall I put this? - a reaction. A quiet reaction - some would say passive aggressive (much furrowing of brow; much tightening of jaw; much pointed silence) - but a reaction nonetheless.

When prompted to explain what his glitch was, he said this: "I know that we've sort of given up when it comes to letting ugly plastic crap in our house, but when I see my 17 month-old daughter come barrelling out the mall (ed. which, yes, she did; she insisted upon pushing it out of the mall in which we acquired it, along with many pairs of socks and underwear and baby latches and some cheap wine, and I let her because my hands were full of bags of socks and underwear and baby latches and wine and it just made my life easier, okay?) pushing a SHOPPING CART (ed. he did use full caps here) I gotta worry about the whole consumerism- run-amok thing here."

Or words to that effect.

Which, fine. We do need to watch the consumerism. But here's my position, as I articulated it to him last night: it's not as though she came barrelling out of the mall with wee shopping bags and a cell phone and a baby chihuahua under her arm and wee sunglasses pushed back on her head and waving a credit card. It's a grocery cart. It came with plastic fruits and vegetables. And grocery shopping is only consumerist in the most literal sense: we must acquire foodstuffs to consume, and when we do, we usually put them in a grocery cart. And if credit cards must be involved in this ritual, so be it. (WonderBaby does not have a credit card, outside of those occasions when she steals mine to buy beer, so I think that we're good on the whole encouraging-responsible-consumption front.)

Besides which, WonderBaby loves pushing things and her beloved toy stroller just crapped out because it was cheap piece of shit from Toys-R-Us and needed replacing with some other pushable thingie so that I wouldn't be called upon to help her push chairs around every five minutes.

So, I think that he's unnecessarily projecting his fears about our souls being irretrievably lost to the Satan that rules the unholy dominion of Fisher-Price and Toys-R-Us and all the other circles of Toy Hell onto a relatively harmless toy grocery cart, which in any case - for the extra twenty-minutes of hands-free time per day that it's giving me - is worth a teeny bit of soul-selling.

I'm right, no? Or this all just evidence that my soul has already been irretrievably lost and I should just start stocking up on Bratz dolls now?

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Still shilling for Blogitzer votes... now, not so much because I am ashamed of my one vote showing, but because I am now determined to give Dooce a run for her money. Her ass is mine.

Or not. If I can even get close enough to hurl some taunts I'll be happy.

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In a totally different vein... my to-shop-or-not-to-shop problems and Bring-It-On-Dooce projects are the very definition of superficiality in comparison to what our current Basement blogger is going through. She really, really needs your support. Please go visit.

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Late Breaking Addendum: you know that there's some showering going on, right? Check it. Play games, win prizes, drink liquor. And - most important - write a toast-post for Liz, Christina and Tammie (being induced AS WE SPEAK), and leave the link for me here - it'll go up on the shower site this weekend. (My post will come later - and it will be soapy as hell.)

58 Comments:

Here's a different perspective from HBF: when he shops for foodstuffs with WB, what does he use to port the food and child? I suspect a cart. So then, if children learn by imitation, why can she not use a cart that is proportional to her when she pretends to shop like her parents?

Yes, it is garish. Yes, it is crap and will collapse under the weight of too many books. But it's not the devil's tool - it's a way for her to imagine being her parents.

I don't think you've sold your soul quite yet. I think you're just preparing her for shopping days ahead.My son (3) is an expert at wielding a cart at Shoppers Drug Mart - but this came only after more than a year's practice with a cart just like WonderBaby's.Besides, if she's not going to let you push her in a stroller you really do need somewhere to put your stuff.

Do you know that I started reading you around the time of that Bumbo post (which made me laugh for the first time in a long time when I first read it) - true story.

I was planning on buying the same cart because the dreaded (but most popular toy ever) pink stroller has almost bitten the dust (damn, it cost me a whole five bucks). I wonder if I'm going to get the same reaction as you did when I bring that one home.

I bet if we got the girls together with matching shopping carts, we soon find them have a downhill street race in those things.

It's a grocery cart - no big deal. It's not like she was wanting the Graco toy baby swing for her baby doll. Most people use grocery carts - otherwise your arms just get tired carrying all those cans, boxes, and bags.

Besides, she can use the cart as a transportation device to clean up her other toys, right?

I've mostly given up. We have too many well meaning friends and family who buy too much shit for our child who is the only grandchild and only great grandchild and only great niece/cousin/etc. I hate it, but they already think I'm a hippy, overprotective freak for feeding her (some) organics, making my own baby food (which was mostly rejected), co-sleeping, not sleep training, preferring the sling to the stroller and still breast feeding at 17 months. But what is my feminist, mostly non-TV watching self to do when friends of the family buy her a pink Zoe and Elmo plastic pocketbook with a giant (and phallic, may I add) lipstick inside of it?!?!?!? I said thank you and chucked it in the bottom of the toy bin. And I would love to have all beautifully designed, hand made, non-plastic toys, but I just have no money for that and with all of the gifts, we really don't need any more stuff.

I am here from the other side to remind you all of something. It sounds from the comments as if you believe that once in your home the garish plastic toys take root, and worse, multiply. Like some bad horror movie. Well, as I look around my house today, I see very few plastic toys.

My kids are so far out of that stage that I feel weird even commenting on it, but - I will anyway! Yay!I don't think it's that big a deal. It's a grocery cart, as you said.So there you go! Completely outdated and uninformed opinions! Woohoo!

Isn't it funny how things get out of control?! When we had our first baby, we had planned on he/she not having a binky. Well, 5 years later, I was bribing my son for it back at night when he slept since he was so attached to it. (Yes, 5! It's my "basement" confession. But he's done with it now)

I was well into baby #1 when an ultra-cool woman I worked with announced that she would only allow "black & white" items into her home for her baby. Yeah, good luck.

My house looks like a playground---we even have a slide, a teepee and a mini-trampoline in our family room (honest, ask Liz). Three kids are going to climb, jump and hide---it's either going to be all over their stuff or all over my furniture. I chose to save my furniture, y/k?

Besides, a shopping cart isn't about consumerism for them. Not unless you decide to hang a Mercedes logo off of it, or put rims on the tires.

With our first child, we were much more relaxed on the garish plastic stuff. By the time the 3rd came around, and she has literally THREE TIMES the stuff, we can't take it anymore.

We have a very-strict no-gifts rule at b-days and (when that was not observed) I have let my parents watch me take the toys they thought my kids JUST HAD TO HAVE to GoodWill because they were either too big, or age inappropriate, or the kids just never played with them.

That did the trick. They are now much more thoughtful when they purchase things. Perhaps that was bitchy of me, but I aked nicely for YEARS and was ignored, and also being the one who has to assemble all that shit and then pick it up all day long, I think I get a say in it. Sorry to take over comment box...

Aside from the pile-up of large plastic crap (which we're currently being drowned in, I might add), I actually have no problem with toys like this. Kids like to play pretend, they like to pretend to do what adults do. They need stuff that is their size that can't hurt them.

For me, the real soul-sucking sellout toys are the electronic ones that have lights and music (and no volume button). I think these types of toys are the enemy because children don't actually have to think to use them - or be creative in any way. (That being said - we do own electronic toys, but I hate myself for having bought them..)

A plastic cart is nothing! Just wait till she's 7 and wants a playstation or her own cell phone or the Disney channel. It only gets harder from here. My boys are 7 and 10 and I REFUSE to pay $50 a month so they can watch "The Suite Life with Zack and Cody" marathons on Disney. We have cracked on the handheld electronic games because they buy us some peace on the weekends. I WILL NEVER cave on the electronic game systems that have to be hooked up to a TV, and a Wii is absolutely out of the question. So when my boys go to the houses of friends who have these toys, they are very well behaved and often seen but not heard because they lapse into a video game coma. And when we go on vacation, all my husband and I have to do is flip on the TV and they immediately settle into their cable coma and husband and I can take a nap. So, not bad all around.

And take heart...they do outgrow the plastic crap. Then the real challenge is how to get rid of it (as can be evidenced by the broken down plastic climbamathingy still sitting in my back yard just waiting for disposal).

My husband plays with the plastic crab more than Miss Baby does. So no complaints from him. But I was, really, hoping the Bauhaus Elf would take it all away in teh night and replace it with something spare and intriguing.

I rotate the plastic junk in and out of various rooms, so it doesn't hit critical mass.

WB is very very active. You do what you need to do. Miss Baby is 10 months old and still content to lie flat on her back and flap her arms at the cat while I spy on the neighbours. You do what you need to do.

I have 2 kids, which means I pretty much have 2 of everything, INCLUDING shopping carts. One is the traditional plastic, the other is a metal one that we actually do take to grocery stores for M to push around and get groceries with. At home, the boys race with them, fill them with food from the pantry (going shopping), and fill them with toys to take from room to room. At the end of the day, I pick up stuff strewn about and throw said stuff into a shopping cart and wheel it out of sight. Very useful all the way around!

long time reader, first time commenter. I just had to say your description of the environmentally friendly handcrafted tools was the funniest thing I've read in a long time. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I laughed out loud reading something on my laptop. If ever. Cheers.

Listen, I'm with you on the shopping cart (sorry Her Bad Father). We have one.

I call it Helpful Developmental Role Playing.

Our playroom is sort of Montessori style (HA! HA! don't I sound grand BWAHAHAHA) a la a miniature house: with a little bedroom are (complete with little wooden toddler bed and two doll beds and a little dresser of doll stuff), shelves of puzzles and books and love seat in the living room area, a pet shop/barn (I know, most houses don't have them but NECESSARY in our world since my children are regularly animals, usually cats, sometimes dogs and horses), and in the center a table (built by me and the hubster all on our own, with wood, FWIW).

In the closet? The "just like real!" play whatsit travel system stroller, an umbrella stroller and a plastic shopping cart.

They love to play grocery store.

They've learned about sorting items by kind and color, and have even learned about money (with their little plastic cash register and little plastic and paper money).

I'll spend a bit of time in purgatory I am sure for supporting unfair labor conditions, but if buying plastic is the worst thing that can be said of me? Doing fine.

I understand where HBF is coming from. It'll be an ongoing struggle, whether you get the plastic cart or not.

Oh yes, I know of which you speak! It's hideous, all the craptastic plastic crap available to buy and then sit, unused, all over the house.

We recently moved, and stored in my daughter's room are four large boxes of STUFF that has yet to be unpacked because, guess what? Her room is full! My mom wants to send me a package every month with more STUFF in it for her, and I mentioned the four boxes. She felt my pain and said she wouldn't send STUFF. I don't mean to sound ungracious, but more STUFF isn't what we need.

We need more handwritten letters from Grandma. And, more evenings around the fire spinning our own hemp yarn.

I aw very anti-plastic stuff at first, not for any particular moral reason but simply because it didn't match my decor. Baaaaahaaaaa! Now my beautiful red sofas have been puked on more times than I can count and the kids have begun to shred the edges of my living room area rug, I've given up. Plus, kids like to imitate adults. It's one of the ways they learn. My kiddos even have plastic cell phones. It's great b/c now they don't drool on mine! (No chihuahua yet though.) Don't sweat the shopping cart.

What really bugs me are the annoying loud, batteries required toys that my parents *insist* on giving the kids! We make them gradually disappear....

We have a shopping cart we acquired from someone else. Most of our big toys were gifts or hand-me-downs.

I'm sure we thought we'd be Earthy-crunchy, no battery-operated toys here, too ... but it didn't last long. She preferred the crap to the craft, and people seemed to get a perverse kick out of giving such stuff.

Consumerism in society is how our economy flows these days. We don't really make anything anymore, we just buy and sell it. It's sad the way that has happened, but I also believe that feeling good, even for a few minutes, about buying something new is part of human nature.

My husband RAILS against consumerism, too, but he's got his head burried in Sierra Trading Club's web site or his Truck Trader Magazine. ... and he buys all kinds of gadgets and gizmos for his "business."

Me spending $5 on unfinished birdhouses at the dollar store so we have "projects" to paint makes him crazy.

I just broke down and bought a pink plastic trike for Monkeygirl. Buy buy all my ideals...at least I am still cooking mostly organic. Slipped up in the food department as well - the girl had french fries a couple of weeks ago.

What helps me with it all is seeing how Monkeygirl drives the playing - the box, the tupperware, the pots & pans, emptying and refilling the kitchen drawers, sorting my clothes drawers - these have held her interest much longer than any plastic, flashing, battery-operated doo dad that her grandma bought.

My son is now 7, and I have been having this argument with his father almost since his birth. And we did get one of those electric cars (at a charity auction) and it turned out to be just about the fave toy of all the kids in the neighborhood.

Now of course I spend the better part of my day trying to not step on little pieces of plastic called Legos. And hoping the dogs don't ingest one.

As for how I dealt with my husband's objections? Yes dear, and then I did what I was going to do anyway.

There are all sorts of "I'll nevers" with child rearing. My big thing was Barnie. As soon as I discovered that Barnie bought me 15 to 20 minutes of attention focused away from mommy, I grew to love that goofy purple dinosaur. Ideals are just that. In an ideal world, I would parent in this way. When contemplating those ideals, you don't know what it is like or what it really means to parent. Then, you have to throw in the child his or herself. There are a lot of things I'd like to do that my daughters want no part of. I tried to tell my siblings these things as they dreamed their ideal parenting situation. It didn't take them long to learn.

HBF, it's like this... Toddlers learn by enacting. They assimilate and compile their knowledge by recreating what they have seen and experienced in their day. This imaginative play both helps to build understanding and demonstrates that understanding of the world around them. As such, it is highly recommended that children have child-sized versions of the tools of adult life to use in this learning through play. Shopping for groceries is one of the constants of adult life, a chore that children witness and are often a part of, and it is only natural and healthy and right, pedagogically speaking, that she should have her own grocery set with which to play. So cut HBM some slack, willya? Maria Montessori would be totally supportive of the grocery cart, plastic or not.

And for the record, although I am the Queen Of All-Natural Wood Toys and other Imagination Sparkers, we have a plastic shopping cart too. But we got it Freecycled. Ask your husband -- does that mitigate the horror?

We have way too many toys and Glenn calls Wal-mart the Devils boutique. My answer to him is nobody asks you to go to work without the tools you need to get things done, why do you expect me or the kids to get on with our day without the things we need to help us get us through it.I will say though that the toys they play with the most do the least!

It is a slippery slope. I found that the number of toys (good and bad) in our house exploded when our little guy hit about 2 years old.

The guilt is hard, but in the end I don't think the stuff matters much. I try to remind myself that my friend's kids turned out just fine despite an extreme overabundance (my thinking at the time) of consumerism. They're the nicest young adults you could ever meet.

As for the shopping cart, the purpose seems to be pushing it as fast as those little wheels can spin. Putting objects in it just creates drag.

As a mother, albeit of one who is presently a teen, and also having two step-children (also both teens now), I have to laugh....hard and out loud.

This has to be one of THE greatest blog posts that I have ever read. Do you know RockStar Mommy or Dad Gone Bad? Both of those bloggers could be your missing twins/triplets! LOL And any parent is likely to relate to your dilemma here.

But take heart...for the day will come when the bright colored plastic junk will be replaced with all manner of electronic gadgetry, computers, video games and consoles, athletic gear, dance gear, musical instruments and equipment, art supplies galore, more books than you EVER had before, mountains of school papers and backpacks, and ridiculous amounts of ODD clothing.

They DO grow up. Their "toys" do change. But you have welcomed into your home another human being with curiosity and interests and dreams. They WILL "accumulate" as they grow. It is part of them finding out who they are apart from you.

Welcome to Mommyhood! :)

I say enjoy the simplicity of today's "accumulations," and know that this too shall pass.

I had this exact experience, except the grocery cart was another form of ugly push toy. The good thing is that the purchase makes you feel better for one day, and then in three months it's out of your house and residing at the Goodwill.

BTW, go to Goodwill and buy the ugly toy for a few bucks, and always take a large plastic item from your house. Trade the ugly stuff often so it does not become so permanent in your life.

P.S. The wooden toys are crappy too. Everything is so poorly made. It's all junk.Bitsy Parker at www.valuewit.com